The arts allow for creative expression, they involve multiple intelligences, they are engaging, they are motivational. In short, using the arts as a foundation for a lesson in any curricular topic is going to make that topic more interesting and it is going to deepen learning.
In order for you to use the arts, you should know a little about them. This page will help you to become familiar with the basic concepts behind music, visual arts, movement/dance, and drama.
If you believe that you are not capable of learning about the arts, now is the time to change your mind. New technology has made learning a lot more interesting and do-able in all areas, including the arts. You don't have to be brilliant in any of the arts to use them in your classroom, the same way mamas who sing lullabyes out of tune still manage to get their kids to sleep.
The information on the following pages has been designed with the novice in mind and how a teacher with very little knowledge about a particular art form can use it successfully in the classroom. back to top
The following is a chart for how to use the arts for specific curricular needs.
Possible activities: create a lesson plan based on activities listed below. If you have access to kids, test your lesson on them and see how it works. Get them to critique it for you and write that up so you can remember the feedback as you create future lessons.
This page has resources and curricular connections below.
How much music do you need to know?
A lot of people feel they cannot incorporate music in their classrooms because they don't know "enough" about it to do so. Yet you can have a lot of music in your classroom even if you can't carry a tune in a bucket and don't know a sixteenth note from an augmented chord.
There are several levels of incorporation:
Listening
Play music while working (individually or for whole class)
Listen to songs to identify textual elements (literacy, social studies)
Play music to set a mood for class
Play music to set a mood for a movement experience--e.g., Holtz's The Planets when learning about the solar system
Play music for students to sing along with
Write new song texts using the melodies of familiar songs
Use black notes of the keyboard and write your own melodies (if you use the black notes only, you cannot make a bad sound).
Learn to play an instrument
Create a musical performance group
Write an opera Opera
Perform someone else's opera
Even with very little knowledge, you can have students working at all three levels. There are lessons on this wiki to support these levels.
That said, if you want to create your own learning experiences, you may want to learn some of the basics of music because that way you can find even more ways to connect the curriculum to music. When you know something about music, your connections become stronger and more meaningful to children. Below are some resources that will support this type of learning.
The web pages here were chosen because they are interesting, fun, and have good explanations. Browse through these to learn some of the basics of music.
Potential curricular connections with music:
Literacy:
Writing songs, reading song texts, reading about music or musicians, creating songs to remember things such as spelling words (First Day of Christmas is great for spelling words: "on the first day of spelling, my teacher gave to me, G-L-A-D-E"). There are many examples of literacy connections on this wiki: Ballad Projects, Blues, Books That Involve Music, Persuasive Songs, Play Party Songs, and Songs as Cultural Artifacts. back to top
In essence, music is audible math. Math connections include: patterns (form), pitch (cycles per second) and the mathematical relationships of intervals, time signatures, rhythm, types of notes (quarter, eighth, etc.).
Here are some resources for understanding the math of music:
Some of these concepts may be challenging, yet if you persist in working on understanding them, music will become even more beautiful to you because you will hear those numerical relationships. Also understanding this will help you to make strong connections between music and math. back to top
Social Studies:
Every culture has produced some form of music and one interesting way to understand a culture is through the music it has produced (Songs as Cultural Artifacts). Many historical events involved music in one way or another (Persuasive Songs) and an interesting way of looking at history is through the music associated with it. back to top
Concepts of the Visual Arts
Activity: use the information in the power points to create a lesson that uses the visual arts as a way of teaching something in the standard curriculum (math, science, social studies, literacy).
Rather than reinventing the wheel, we are going to provide several resources with arts-related lessons and concepts that have connections to the regular curriculum. These are all power points created by the Cameron Museum in Wilmington, NC along with UNC at Greensboro. You can use these power points as a basis for a lesson.
Cameron Museum in Wilmington, NC in cooperation with UNC at Greensboro
Language Arts: narrative, story elements, main idea/details
Social Studies: relationships, roles in society, cultural context
Visual Art: shape, color, space, rhythm, repetition, art history back to top
Cameron Museum
Language Arts: character’s feelings, story elements, main idea/details
Social Studies: roles in society, cultural context
Visual Art: color, pattern, art history back to top
Cameron Museum
Language Arts: author’s purpose, poetry, descriptive language, parts of speech, reality and fantasy, compare and contrast
Social Studies: symbols, myth
Mathematics: symmetry, pattern
Visual Art: composition, shape, color, space, folk art back to top
Cameron Museum
Visual Art and Social Studies: use of materials or resources
Visual Art and Geometry: two and three dimensional shapes
Visual Art and Language Art: artist’s purpose, narrative, descriptive language, main idea, compare and contrast, oral language, sequence, inference
Science: properties of soil, natural resources, evidence back to top
Cameron Museum
Visual Art and Language Arts: setting, main idea and details, compare and contrast
Social Studies: space, rural, suburban and urban
Visual Art: space, shape, color, perspective, light
Science: observation, identification, evidence, light, shadow, seasons back to top
Cameron Museum
Language Arts: descriptive language, imaginative narrative, story elements
Science: weather, climate, seasons
Visual Art: color, texture, space, light, shape, line, art vocabulary back to top
Cameron Museum
Language Arts: inference, descriptive language, character’s feelings
Social Studies: homes and communities, disasters
Visual Art: color, texture, light, feelings, art vocabulary back to top
Social Studies: interdependence of people, resources,and the environment
Visual Art: weaving, sculpture, qualities of art materials
Science: natural resources, minerals, plants
Mathematics: attributes, three dimensional shapes back to top
Language Arts: descriptive language, oral language
Mathematics: three dimensional shapes
Visual Art: shape/form, simplification/abstraction, light and shadow, composition back to top
Language Arts: setting, characters, details, fact and fiction, inference, compare and contrast, oral language
Social Studies: location, occupations, agriculture, family
Visual Art: painting, printmaking back to top
Language Arts: oral language, descriptive language
Social Studies: roles in society
Visual Art: portraits, texture, background, color, detail, space back to top
Language Arts: fact and fantasy, setting, character, narrative, mythology, main idea and details, oral language
Social Studies: land forms, North Carolina history
Visual Art: realism, abstraction, simplification, space, color back to top
Language Arts: descriptive language, setting, oral language
Social Studies: landforms, land use, climate
Visual Art: color, line, shape, texture, space, value back to top
Language Arts: descriptive language, oral language
Mathematics: line, shape, symmetry
Visual Art: color, line, shape, stained glass, mixed media back to top
Mathematics: geometry
Visual Art: texture, shape, line, space
Language Arts: setting, descriptive language, oral language back to top
Concepts of Drama
Activity: choose a type of drama activity and create or find materials you can use (e.g., if you choose reader's theater, create a script and upload it).
Drama can be one of the most powerful tools a teacher can use in the classroom. It can be used to extend literacy experiences, but it also can be used across the curriculum to help students understand the experiences of other people and to allow students to try on adult roles and adult authority.
Drama and Literacy: retell stories through acting them out, reader's theater, create drama around what happened to characters twenty years later, retell stories by creating "illustrations" or tableaux, create a puppet show around a story, create "interviews" of authors (kids play the authors), create newscast around stories (e.g., a newscast about The True Story of the Three Little Pigs), create infomercials to sell action figures from stories, create "reality" show using the story as a basis, create "talk show" of characters being interviewed by Oprah or someone like that. back to top
Drama and Math: Act out a word problem, demonstrating through the interactions of characters how the problem eventually gets solved. Adapt a story to math, such as the Three Little Pigs do math--each pig has to figure out how many sticks/bricks or how much straw has to be used to create their houses. Create a story around sports figures where statistics play a role (player gets chosen for his/her statistics or cut from the team). Algebra was developed because of complex rules of inheritance in Medieval Muslim cultures; you could create a grieving family and a will that has to get read and acted upon. back to top
Drama and Social Studies: Most cultures and historical periods have forms of story telling and/or drama. For example, in Indonesia there are elaborate shadow puppets. Focus some time learning about and participating in the types of dramas that would have been around. back to top
Drama and Science: If you want students to observe something (such as an animal or plant), turn them into expert scientists who are going to help other people understand whatever is being observed. Stories from the history of science can be dramatized. When you read informational books you might find that there are the seeds of a story (conflict between people) that can be the basis of improvisatory drama. back to top
Possible activities: create a lesson plan that incorporates movement as a way of teaching a concept you want to teach. If you have access to kids, test your lesson on them and see how it works. Get them to critique it for you and write that up so you can remember the feedback as you create future lessons.
You can think of the body as one giant manipulative. It moves in four dimensions: up and down, forward and back, side to side, and across time. It can move with a range of energy, from very little to a whole lot. The body can move quickly or slowly. Therefore, the body can be used to represent just about anything you can think of.
Additionally, every culture has created some sort of dance tradition and learning these traditions can become a way of gaining insight into a culture. Here are some folk dance resources:
Music
Visual Arts
Drama
Creative Movement and Dance
Chart of Arts in Relation to Curriculum
The Fourth R (Arts) (information about why the arts are beneficial for students)
A national focus on the arts in education (read at least the executive summary)
http://family.go.com/parenting/pkg-teen/article-772556-building-a-well--rounded-child-through-art-advocacy-t/
This article quotes our own Tobie Sanders on the importance of arts in education.
http://www.deewr.gov.au/Ministers/Garrett/Media/Releases/Pages/Article_110826_100301.aspx
Australia's national curriculum is centered around the arts and the arts are considered essential to learning.
The arts allow for creative expression, they involve multiple intelligences, they are engaging, they are motivational. In short, using the arts as a foundation for a lesson in any curricular topic is going to make that topic more interesting and it is going to deepen learning.
In order for you to use the arts, you should know a little about them. This page will help you to become familiar with the basic concepts behind music, visual arts, movement/dance, and drama.
If you believe that you are not capable of learning about the arts, now is the time to change your mind. New technology has made learning a lot more interesting and do-able in all areas, including the arts. You don't have to be brilliant in any of the arts to use them in your classroom, the same way mamas who sing lullabyes out of tune still manage to get their kids to sleep.
The information on the following pages has been designed with the novice in mind and how a teacher with very little knowledge about a particular art form can use it successfully in the classroom.
back to top
The following is a chart for how to use the arts for specific curricular needs.
Appalachian Culture
Ballad Projects
Blues
Books that involve music
Opera
Persuasive Songs
Patterns
Appalachian Culture
Ballad Projects
Cigar Box Instruments
Civil Rights Songs
National Anthem Project
Persuasive Songs
Songs as Cultural Artifacts
Appalachian Culture
Cigar Box Instruments
Musical Instruments from Recycled Materials
Lesson two
Lesson four
Lesson five
Lesson six
Lesson seven
Lesson eight
Lesson thirteen
Lesson fourteen
Lesson sixteen
Lesson seventeen
Lesson eighteen
Lesson nineteen
Calligraphy
Carnival poetry
Claymation
Comic Strips and Books
Dream Flags
Eight Page Book
Making books
Lesson five
Lesson nine
Lesson fourteen
Lesson fifteen
Lesson nineteen
Lesson twenty
Beading
Celtic knots
Quilting in the Classroom
Tessellations Topography Symmetry
Lesson two
Lesson four
Lesson five
Lesson six
Lesson eight
Lesson nine
Lesson fifteen
Lesson sixteen
Lesson seventeen
Lesson eighteen
Lesson nineteen
Beading
Pysanky
Quilting in the Classroom
Lesson seven
Lesson nine
Gakology
Science of Tie Dye
Using movement to respond to children's literature
Ocean
Whales
Tundra and the Seasons
Envelope Puppets
Readers Theater
Concepts of Music
Possible activities: create a lesson plan based on activities listed below. If you have access to kids, test your lesson on them and see how it works. Get them to critique it for you and write that up so you can remember the feedback as you create future lessons.This page has resources and curricular connections below.
How much music do you need to know?
A lot of people feel they cannot incorporate music in their classrooms because they don't know "enough" about it to do so. Yet you can have a lot of music in your classroom even if you can't carry a tune in a bucket and don't know a sixteenth note from an augmented chord.
There are several levels of incorporation:
Listen to songs to identify textual elements (literacy, social studies)
Play music to set a mood for class
Play music to set a mood for a movement experience--e.g., Holtz's The Planets when learning about the solar system
Play music for students to sing along with
Study or analyze music styles
Use black notes of the keyboard and write your own melodies (if you use the black notes only, you cannot make a bad sound).
Learn to play an instrument
Create a musical performance group
Write an opera Opera
Perform someone else's opera
That said, if you want to create your own learning experiences, you may want to learn some of the basics of music because that way you can find even more ways to connect the curriculum to music. When you know something about music, your connections become stronger and more meaningful to children. Below are some resources that will support this type of learning.
The web pages here were chosen because they are interesting, fun, and have good explanations. Browse through these to learn some of the basics of music.
http://www.sfskids.org/templates/splash.asp
http://www.musictheory.net/
http://www.ilearnmusic.com/
http://www.dsokids.com/
http://www.playmusic.org/
Games and activities for learning music
http://www.classicsforkids.com/games/
http://www.creatingmusic.com/
http://www.funbrain.com/notes/
back to top
Potential curricular connections with music:
Literacy:
Writing songs, reading song texts, reading about music or musicians, creating songs to remember things such as spelling words (First Day of Christmas is great for spelling words: "on the first day of spelling, my teacher gave to me, G-L-A-D-E"). There are many examples of literacy connections on this wiki: Ballad Projects, Blues, Books That Involve Music, Persuasive Songs, Play Party Songs, and Songs as Cultural Artifacts.
back to top
In essence, music is audible math. Math connections include: patterns (form), pitch (cycles per second) and the mathematical relationships of intervals, time signatures, rhythm, types of notes (quarter, eighth, etc.).
Here are some resources for understanding the math of music:
http://www.musicmasterworks.com/WhereMathMeetsMusic.html
http://members.cox.net/mathmistakes/music.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_and_mathematics
http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/uses-math/music/
http://jackhdavid.thehouseofdavid.com/papers/math.html
Some of these concepts may be challenging, yet if you persist in working on understanding them, music will become even more beautiful to you because you will hear those numerical relationships. Also understanding this will help you to make strong connections between music and math.
back to top
Science:
The science of music is acoustics (a form of physics). Musical Instruments from Recycled Materials is a lesson that engages with acoustics. Here are some websites with information about and animated illustrations of various concepts in acoustics:
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/music/
http://paws.kettering.edu/~drussell/Demos.html
http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Harrison/Flash/
back to top
Social Studies:
Every culture has produced some form of music and one interesting way to understand a culture is through the music it has produced (Songs as Cultural Artifacts). Many historical events involved music in one way or another (Persuasive Songs) and an interesting way of looking at history is through the music associated with it.
back to top
Concepts of the Visual Arts
Activity: use the information in the power points to create a lesson that uses the visual arts as a way of teaching something in the standard curriculum (math, science, social studies, literacy).Rather than reinventing the wheel, we are going to provide several resources with arts-related lessons and concepts that have connections to the regular curriculum. These are all power points created by the Cameron Museum in Wilmington, NC along with UNC at Greensboro. You can use these power points as a basis for a lesson.
Language Arts: narrative, story elements, main idea/details
Social Studies: relationships, roles in society, cultural context
Visual Art: shape, color, space, rhythm, repetition, art history
back to top
Language Arts: character’s feelings, story elements, main idea/details
Social Studies: roles in society, cultural context
Visual Art: color, pattern, art history
back to top
Language Arts: author’s purpose, poetry, descriptive language, parts of speech, reality and fantasy, compare and contrast
Social Studies: symbols, myth
Mathematics: symmetry, pattern
Visual Art: composition, shape, color, space, folk art
back to top
Visual Art and Social Studies: use of materials or resources
Visual Art and Geometry: two and three dimensional shapes
Visual Art and Language Art: artist’s purpose, narrative, descriptive language, main idea, compare and contrast, oral language, sequence, inference
Science: properties of soil, natural resources, evidence
back to top
Visual Art and Language Arts: setting, main idea and details, compare and contrast
Social Studies: space, rural, suburban and urban
Visual Art: space, shape, color, perspective, light
Science: observation, identification, evidence, light, shadow, seasons
back to top
Language Arts: descriptive language, imaginative narrative, story elements
Science: weather, climate, seasons
Visual Art: color, texture, space, light, shape, line, art vocabulary
back to top
Language Arts: inference, descriptive language, character’s feelings
Social Studies: homes and communities, disasters
Visual Art: color, texture, light, feelings, art vocabulary
back to top
Social Studies: interdependence of people, resources,and the environment
Visual Art: weaving, sculpture, qualities of art materials
Science: natural resources, minerals, plants
Mathematics: attributes, three dimensional shapes
back to top
Language Arts: descriptive language, details, oral language
Visual Art: architecture, shape, color, space, artist’s purpose, serigraphy
back to top
Language Arts: descriptive language, oral language
Mathematics: three dimensional shapes
Visual Art: shape/form, simplification/abstraction, light and shadow, composition
back to top
Language Arts: setting, characters, details, fact and fiction, inference, compare and contrast, oral language
Social Studies: location, occupations, agriculture, family
Visual Art: painting, printmaking
back to top
Language Arts: oral language, descriptive language
Social Studies: roles in society
Visual Art: portraits, texture, background, color, detail, space
back to top
Language Arts: fact and fantasy, setting, character, narrative, mythology, main idea and details, oral language
Social Studies: land forms, North Carolina history
Visual Art: realism, abstraction, simplification, space, color
back to top
Language Arts: descriptive language, setting, oral language
Social Studies: landforms, land use, climate
Visual Art: color, line, shape, texture, space, value
back to top
Language Arts: descriptive language, oral language
Mathematics: line, shape, symmetry
Visual Art: color, line, shape, stained glass, mixed media
back to top
Mathematics: geometry
Visual Art: texture, shape, line, space
Language Arts: setting, descriptive language, oral language
back to top
Concepts of Drama
Activity: choose a type of drama activity and create or find materials you can use (e.g., if you choose reader's theater, create a script and upload it).Drama can be one of the most powerful tools a teacher can use in the classroom. It can be used to extend literacy experiences, but it also can be used across the curriculum to help students understand the experiences of other people and to allow students to try on adult roles and adult authority.
Drama and Literacy: retell stories through acting them out, reader's theater, create drama around what happened to characters twenty years later, retell stories by creating "illustrations" or tableaux, create a puppet show around a story, create "interviews" of authors (kids play the authors), create newscast around stories (e.g., a newscast about The True Story of the Three Little Pigs), create infomercials to sell action figures from stories, create "reality" show using the story as a basis, create "talk show" of characters being interviewed by Oprah or someone like that.
back to top
Drama and Math: Act out a word problem, demonstrating through the interactions of characters how the problem eventually gets solved. Adapt a story to math, such as the Three Little Pigs do math--each pig has to figure out how many sticks/bricks or how much straw has to be used to create their houses. Create a story around sports figures where statistics play a role (player gets chosen for his/her statistics or cut from the team). Algebra was developed because of complex rules of inheritance in Medieval Muslim cultures; you could create a grieving family and a will that has to get read and acted upon.
back to top
Drama and Social Studies: Most cultures and historical periods have forms of story telling and/or drama. For example, in Indonesia there are elaborate shadow puppets. Focus some time learning about and participating in the types of dramas that would have been around.
back to top
Drama and Science: If you want students to observe something (such as an animal or plant), turn them into expert scientists who are going to help other people understand whatever is being observed. Stories from the history of science can be dramatized. When you read informational books you might find that there are the seeds of a story (conflict between people) that can be the basis of improvisatory drama.
back to top
Here are three good drama activities
Envelope Puppets
Reader's Theater
Classroom Drama
Resources for drama
http://www.childdrama.com/lessons.html (tons of ideas)
back to top
Concepts of Movement and Dance
Possible activities: create a lesson plan that incorporates movement as a way of teaching a concept you want to teach. If you have access to kids, test your lesson on them and see how it works. Get them to critique it for you and write that up so you can remember the feedback as you create future lessons.You can think of the body as one giant manipulative. It moves in four dimensions: up and down, forward and back, side to side, and across time. It can move with a range of energy, from very little to a whole lot. The body can move quickly or slowly. Therefore, the body can be used to represent just about anything you can think of.
All of these characteristics can be used in effective lessons that help students to remember the concepts you are teaching. Here are a couple of movement-based lessons I have been a part of creating and have taught:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1632207/kinesthetic_teaching_of_the_seasons.html?cat=16
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1628414/kinesthetic_teaching_of_punctuation.html?cat=4
back to top
Here are some more movement-based lessons:
back to top
Additionally, every culture has created some sort of dance tradition and learning these traditions can become a way of gaining insight into a culture. Here are some folk dance resources:
http://ifdo.pugmarks.com/dancpage.html
http://www.sdhs.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=127
back to top
Some resources on creative movement:
http://www.imonk.com/angela/lessons/creating_movement.html
http://www.mindsinmotion.org/creative.html (has examples of science lessons)
http://leapinglegs.blogspot.com/2010/05/exploring-science-through-movement.html (parts of a flower, life cycle; also whole blog has other ideas)
http://www.columbia.k12.mo.us/tmp/ccollins/My%20Web%20Sites/Lesson%20IDeas.htm (movement across the curriculum)
http://www.ket.org/artstoolkit/dance/lessonplan/
You will have to register (free) in order to use these resources but they are worth it. This is from Kentucky Educational Television.
http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/teach/les.cfm
Lesson plans from the Kennedy Center (includes all the arts)
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/dancin/index.html
A set of resources from PBS
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